Arnold Friberg was always concerned with accuracy. The artist was afraid that after returning home from London to finish Prince Charles portrait it would be to late to change anything that was inaccurate. So Friberg decided he needed to make wax impressions of the Prince’s uniform.

Concerned that a rule might prevent the artist from creating wax impressions he decided not to ask permission and just did it. All the while Friberg felt nervous about the possible consequences. In th e end it paid off because the prince liked the portrait.

Arnold Friberg traveled to London to paint a portrait of the Prince Charles. The prince was not particularly enthusiastic about posing for his portrait. he told Friberg, “This is not one of my favorite chores.” The artists and his royal subject did enjoy each other’s company, and there was a mutual respect between them. They also discovered a minor cultural gap that enabled Friberg to delight the prince with such old jokes as, “Why does a fireman wear read suspenders?” (To keep his pants up)

One of Arnold Friberg’s amazing adventure took place when he went to London to paint a portrait of Prince Charles. It was a great honor for an artist to be picked to create such a piece of artwork. Palace officials prepared a large painting room overlooking the gate and courtyard where the Changing of the Guard took place each day, the Victoria fountain, and the Male, a tree-lined road through St. James Park.

Friberg’s new art room contained massive easels built during the Victorian era, and there was canvas spread on the floor to protect the rich carpeting from paint stains. The walls were covered with hand-painted floral designs and a massive marble and gold fireplace was on one side of the room. There were fold mandarin figures and a gold dragon decorating the fireplace, while a large ornate chandelier hung overhead.

There is more to Arnold Friberg’s range or work than just his paintings and drawings. He became interested in the art form of sculpting. His first subject in this three-dimensional art form was to create a horse and rider that was cast in bronze through the lost wax process.

Sculpting is not really any great change in direction for Friberg. “if you understand the form well enough to draw it,” he claims, “you can model it; I don’t see why people are surprised that an artist can do both.”

The living quality of the horses in Arnold Friberg’s paintings comes from his fascination with both the large and the tiny anatomical features that affect each action of the horse, whether it be standing, drinking, walking, or galloping across the frontier. Friberg is an artist that believed strongly in the study of anatomy which many art schools objected too.

“I want to show the bones, the tendons, the muscles, and the blood vessels…this is all structure. There are some tiny ligaments, almost like straps or band-aids, wrapped over another muscle just to hold it so it doesn’t slip off the bone. They are so very thin that you almost never see them, except when the horse moves just a tiny bit, causing a slight strain. Then these little strap ligaments actually show up through the thick hid of the animal, and it’s fun to know what they are.”

Arnold Friberg claims that over the years some artists and art schools have objected to the study of anatomy, seeing it as restraining creative freedom and putting the artist into an “oh-so-correct” straightjacket. In contrast to this school of thought, Friberg find the study of anatomy to be exciting and powerful incentive to creative work.

“I dind I can do things with the body of a man or an animal because I understand what the form is and how it works.”

This one Arnold Friberg’s childhood cartoons entitled “Such is Life, by Arnold Friberg.” These types of illustrations were Friberg’s first attempt at original art. This cartoon was completed in 1921 at the age of seven.

While Arnold Friberg was still a student at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, he learned of a major competition known as the Prix de Rome, and he decided to compete.

In 1940, Friberg entered the required number of art pieces that he hoped would either win or at least give him the needed experience to take the prize during his next three years of eligibility. But the impending war would make his first such competition his last. His entry did not win, but he was told that all works submitted would be displayed in New York City.

Working in New York in the 1940s was rough on Arnold Friberg. He worked on finishing an art piece he planned on pitching to Liberty magazine and finished just before Labor day during a time when the artist was without money, had fallen seven weeks behind in his room rent, and frequently went without meals.

Fribeg was told that the cover design had been rejected because it did not fit with editorial plans. Nonetheless, the staff was impressed and offered Friberg a freelance job.

Arnold Friberg’s artistic growth has been the natural evolution of a working artist. Training, experience, observation, and experimentation have nurtured the development of skill, sensitivity, and vision that have become both instinctive and automatic. It is not easy to categorize Friberg’s work. Never has he sought to pattern himself after any one artist or style of art. Yet, when considering Friberg’s artistic career, it is possible to discern various developmental stages.

The first early spark ignited when young Friberg concluded that an artist must be an original thinker. This is surely one of the most basic observations any artist makes during his or her career. What is particularly noteworthy in Friberg’s case is that he sensed this urge for originality well before entering elementary school. His childhood cartoons, though crudely drawn in pencil, were never imitations. they were single panels in a format that was then popular in such well-known comics as “out of Way” by J.R. Williams, “Our Boarding House” by Gene Ahern, and “The Toonerville Trolley” by Fontaine Fox. But it was their format that he strove to recreate, not their content. Friberg sought to develop his own creations.